Author.
Pastor.
Musician.

I was recently included in a Color of the Year Instragram mashup by Mike Kim (@mikekimtv).

I actually made the montage/collage twice. Once for my metaphorical face, the other for my actual face. (Some might even argue I’m the sock, too).

The honor is quite overwhelming.

But the presentation does beg the question: how did white people ever get stuck with the white color stigma? We’re much more pink than we are white. I mean, look at my cranium. It’s more like under-cooked chicken, or maybe pork ribs.

I’ve met a few albinos in my life. Now they’re white. Some are even translucent.

Black people aren’t actually black at all. Some are cocoa, and some are coffee (both preferred food beverages).

Asian people, like Mike, are olivey, much like Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Native American folks.

True Indians are like dark cinnamon buns. Probably from all the curry and chai tea they consume. That’s my theory.

Anyone else notice the food theme?

Humans have forever tried to classify things. Science. Emotions. Music. It’s part of how we’re wired. But sometimes we try and classify things based on fear, insecurity, and sheer ignorance.

Like race and skin-tone.

Like my wife, I was raised in a “colorless” home by parents who never differentiated between skin color or race. They had Christian convictions about such biases. And also like her, it wasn’t until I was an early teen that I discovered racism was still rampant in the United States – and the rest of the world for that matter.

Yet this spirit of racism is easily identified as a fraud, and something we as Christians must be the first to exterminate.

For one, the spirit of racism fails to take into account that all humans are made in God’s image. To prefer one over the other is to alienate and shun the likeness of God himself. Doing so is anti-human, anti-Christian, and anti-God. It was God’s fail-safe and the genius of making us after himself. To say you accept Jesus but you can’t accept all men is tantamount to not accepting Jesus. Be careful.

If you have a basis, fear, frustration or vendetta toward a race, you need to repent and ask for Jesus’ heart for that people group – because they’re his people group made in his image.

And secondly, this spirit of racism didn’t even get its color assignments right.